Read and comment on this story from the Huntington Herald Dispatch by Moldova PCV Nicole Sheets who says that sometimes she sees the moon on her way home from the university and thinks of her family: her parents working, her brother at school, the dog dozing. Knowing that same moon shines on Moldova as on America, helps ease the homesickness. Read the story at:

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Looking on the same moon helps ease homesickness

By NICOLE SHEETS - guest columnist

"Same moon." My folks and I hearten each other with these words in our e-mails and letters. The same moon shines on Moldova as on America, no matter that it gets to me 7 hours earlier.

My dad reports from time to time on the West Virginia moon: itís a man-in-the-moon moon, a sharp sliver. Itís a big yellow moon. Or itís not there at all, a burned-out night-light.

Dark sets in early now. Sometimes I see the moon on my way home from my university and think of my family: my parents working, my brother at school, the dog dozing.

My first bout of real homesickness came with a cold snap last month. We had snow in early November, though after latching on to the sidewalks for a few days, it melted and hasnít yet returned. Lacing up my boots, I feared that winter had sunk in its teeth for good, that the next four (or, gasp, more) months would mean wearing layers like an onion and not seeing the sun.

But the weather and I have mellowed significantly since then.

On a recent, unseasonably warm Saturday night, I cooked dinner at my house for three other Peace Corps volunteers.

We walked through the local piatsa for vegetables: two heads of cabbage (one red, one green), a half-kilo of promising looking tomatoes, a packet of coconut, and one expensive orange (you can find citrus here, but itís imported from warmer climes).

In the kitchen, my host sister helped me with the rice, spreading it like beads on the kitchen table to pick out weevils and rocks.

The Americans chopped vegetables for my Moldovan variation of gado gado, an Indonesian dish I swiped from the Moosewood Cookbook: red cabbage leaves on a platter, topped with a mound of rice, carrots, green cabbage, chopped boiled eggs, tofu (called soy cheese here), all covered with peanut sauce made from a vat of Peter Pan peanut butter a friend mailed to me from home.

As I sat down to eat, I could see the gauzy moon through the sheer curtains of the kitchen.

We ate our fill and then, locking the gate behind me, I walked my friends to the main road. And then the moon saw me home, where I sang out loud to my music while washing the dishes.

Nicole Sheets is a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova. Her e-mail address is moldovanicole@yahoo.com. Her column appears on the Life page the first Sunday of each month.

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This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; PCVs in the Field; COS - Moldova

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